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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28353303">Save Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSlytherinRose/pseuds/TheSlytherinRose'>TheSlytherinRose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Saw (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:14:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28353303</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSlytherinRose/pseuds/TheSlytherinRose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Determined to warn her ex-husband John about the FBI's investigation of him, Jill Tuck ventures to the Gideon Meatpacking Plant. John, always so meticulous in his planning, didn't anticipate Jill joining his final game. </p><p>One night changes the trajectory of six lives, for better or worse...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John "Jigsaw" Kramer/Jill Tuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter One</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic follows canon until the end of SAW III, where it diverges during Jeff Denlon's test.</p><p>(TW for SAW-like violence, miscarriage, language, etc.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“<em>I promise you, when all this is done, I will provide a way out for you</em>.”</p><p>            The words played through Jill’s mind on a loop, taunting her. She hadn’t been able to rid her thoughts of them since that morning, when her ex-husband had spoken them to her and handed her the silver key that she now worried between her fingers. The metal was warming beneath her touch, and each time she twisted the key, one direction and then the other, she felt the chain it hung on at her neck go taut. The key’s bow was heart-shaped, and when Jill had asked what it was for and John had simply folded her hand closed around it and assured her she would know what to do with it when the time came, she had felt that silver heart digging into her skin. She’d felt years of unsaid words sticking in her throat, and something in John’s deep blue eyes had told her that would be the last time she would ever look into them.</p><p>            Jill inhaled, one hand gripping the key and the other tightening on the leather of her steering wheel. She knew John didn’t want her here—he’d been pushing her away since they had lost their son, and while she’d fought to persuade John to let her in again even after their eventual divorce, he was determined to keep her shut out of what his life had become. He was dying, and he seemed to want to do that alone. Or, at least, without her.</p><p>            <em>Well, the hell with that. </em></p><p>She’d seen Amanda with him that morning. The two of them were clearly close—John claimed to have cured Amanda’s heroin addiction even when Jill and her clinic hadn’t been able to, and it seemed that, in return, Amanda was helping him carry out his work. Jill told herself that she couldn’t begrudge either of them this; John had no one else, to her knowledge, and if whatever he had put Amanda through had helped her, Jill wanted to be happy for her former patient. And she was. But she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that she herself should be the one at John’s side, steadying him as the cancer fought to break him. Not this woman who couldn’t possibly know him as well as she did.</p><p>            Jill tightened her grip on the key at her neck. No matter how many times she told herself that she was over John, that she didn’t still love him, she knew she was lying to herself. She would always love him, and she wasn’t going to let him push her away when she would soon lose the chance to reach him forever.</p><p>            Besides, she needed to tell him the FBI was on his trail. After her interrogation at the hands of Agent Strahm, she was certain Strahm and whoever else he could enlist would reach the building before the night was over. Jill had been determined not to crack, to give him any information at all, but after hours of threats, including one of being indicted as an accomplice to John’s crimes, she’d given in. She could still smell the agent’s breath at the moment he’d pinned her to the interrogation room wall. Coffee and stale mint.</p><p>            Jill needed to warn John.</p><p>            She turned off the car, slipped its keys into her jacket pocket, and stepped out, shutting the door behind her. The plant loomed in front of her—“Gideon Meat Packing” was still emblazoned in bright blue letters above her head, and the sight of the name twisted her stomach. Her son had been named after this building, which was the first one John had designed in his career as a civil engineer, long before he had become the man the media called “Jigsaw.”</p><p>            Jill swallowed and slipped her hands into her pockets. Light streamed through the windows and into the parking lot, and the idea of what might lie inside made her mouth go dry. She glanced back up at the sign once more, at the name of her son, and then started toward the door.</p><p>***</p><p>Amanda was weeping, her gaze flicking back and forth between the woman she wanted to kill and the man imploring her not to do it. John stared at her, his head bandaged from the crude brain operation he’d just undergone and his body unwilling to let him go to her. The makeshift operating room around him was cold, and the fluorescent lights were too bright, but everything was in precisely the right place.</p><p>            An array of sharp tools lay spread over most of the room’s surfaces. Tools that could save or kill. Gleaming scalpels. Drills. Sawblades.</p><p>            Dr. Lynn Denlon, John’s former physician and one of his current test subjects, stood across the room, crying, her eyes downcast. Somewhere within the meatpacking plant, drawing nearer by the moment, was Lynn’s husband Jeff, who was fighting a war of his own. Jeff was learning to let go of his obsession with exacting revenge on the people responsible for his pain. Lynn had completed her test: keeping John alive long enough to face Jeff. She was free to go, or she would be, if Amanda agreed to take off the metal collar that had been designed to kill her if she’d tried to leave too soon.</p><p>            Instead, Amanda held her at gunpoint. Amanda—John’s student, his protégé, his <em>daughter, </em>in all the ways that mattered—was suffering, just as she had been the first time John had decided to test her. Heroin had been the demon plaguing her then, and now, it was a lack of mercy that stained her soul red. The traps she set were unwinnable; she took lives instead of saving them, and now that John was offering her one final chance to choose not to kill, she stood at the precipice of a fall from which she could not return.</p><p>            “She’s important to you,” John told Amanda softly. The beeping of his heart monitor was steady, and he found himself grateful that it did not betray his fear. Despite himself, despite the number of times he had said emotion could not enter the equation when he was testing someone, he loved Amanda. She was family to him, and even though he had taken every precaution necessary to prepare for her failure, he still wanted her to succeed.</p><p>            “She’s not important to me,” Amanda insisted, her eyes filled with anger.</p><p>            “I beg you to reconsider that.” John had watched the two women interact all night, and he had seen the jealousy in every glance Amanda had thrown at Lynn and heard it in every insult and threat she’d uttered. He prided himself on his skills of observation and his ability to understand the inner workings of the minds surrounding him, but something was missing in the motivation for Amanda’s envy. John suspected more had transpired between the two women than he had witnessed, as he had been anesthetized for his surgery and his memory was fogged in a few spots, but he had no idea what he could have missed. He had anticipated Amanda’s unwillingness to let Lynn leave without further punishment before the game had begun, but the resentment he saw in his protégé seemed to run deeper than mere bloodlust.</p><p>            Amanda watched him, her face twisted with pain as she shook her head.</p><p>            “This is your last chance, Amanda,” John continued.</p><p>            Amanda returned her gaze to Lynn, pointing the gun at her head with a quivering hand. “She’s nothing.”</p><p>            Lynn stared blankly at the floor, tears trailing down her cheeks.</p><p>            “The time’s running out. Now, you think about what you are doing,” John implored Amanda, whose desperation was plain on her face as her breathing grew rapid and unsteady. “Think about everything that you’ve done. You think about what you’ve promised me.”</p><p>            The rustling of the plastic strips hanging in the doorway drew John’s focus. He’d known Jeff was moving more quickly through his tests than anticipated, but he’d hoped to give Amanda time to make her choice before Jeff arrived.</p><p>            “Think about—”</p><p>            The words died in John’s throat. That wasn’t Jeff standing in the doorway. That wasn’t one of his test subjects at all. He knew that curly blond hair, those panicked brown eyes. Suddenly, years of meticulous planning came to a halt in John’s mind as he processed that a variable he hadn’t predicted had entered the equation.</p><p>            Standing at the edge of the room, only steps away from Lynn, was the woman he had seen in his mind’s eye while under anesthesia, when he had been able to return to a time before the loss of their son had made it impossible for them to move forward and he had lost both of the people he had loved more than life itself.</p><p>            That wasn’t Jeff in the doorway.</p><p>            It was Jill.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When Jeff arrives in the operating room, Amanda has to make a choice. Life or death?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Amanda’s finger stilled on the trigger. Her pulse roared in her ears, and the rebuttal she had been preparing for John’s words evaporated from her mind. All she could see was Jill—innocent, well-meaning Jill, who was the last person in the world who needed to be in that room at that exact moment.</p><p>            Then everything slid back into focus. John lying on his sickbed, pleading with Amanda not to kill the doctor. Lynn just standing there, not begging for her life anymore or for her freedom, like she had been doing since her arrival.</p><p>            Amanda remembered the moment after John’s surgery when he’d looked at the doctor and uttered the words “<em>I love you.</em>” That had almost driven Amanda to kill Lynn then and there. Amanda knew rationally that John hadn’t been in his right mind at the time; he’d been high on anesthesia after a brain operation that had destroyed her to watch. But then he’d insisted that Lynn was <em>important, </em>that she held Amanda’s life in her hands, and how could she? Amanda was the one with the gun. With the power. Lynn had a collar strapped to her neck that was designed to take off her head if she made the wrong move.</p><p>            Amanda was not weak. This woman would not break her.</p><p>            The letter she’d found in the desk from John’s other apprentice, however, might do just that.</p><p>            That bastard Hoffman knew what she had done—that she had been there the night John and Jill’s son had died. That she had been the one to urge Cecil, her then-boyfriend, to rob Jill’s clinic because she’d been in withdrawal, and that Jill’s injury during the robbery and subsequent miscarriage were Amanda’s fault.</p><p>            “<em>Kill Lynn Denlon or I will tell John what you did</em>,” the letter had said. If she killed Lynn, she was failing John, failing everything he needed her to be. But if she didn’t, he would learn the truth about her, and she would lose him forever. The one stable presence in her life—the one person who had believed in her potential even when she hadn’t been able to see it in herself.</p><p>            And now his ex-wife, the woman whose child Amanda had killed, was standing in front of her, staring at the gun in her hands.</p><p>            “Jill?”</p><p>            The shock in John’s tone unnerved Amanda. He was never caught off-guard. Never anything less than prepared for every outcome. Jill’s presence wasn’t part of his plan.</p><p>            “What are you—?” Jill cut herself off, clearly struggling for words. She was frozen, glancing from the gun to Amanda’s face and back, and Amanda’s stomach churned. Jill was the only other person who had tried to help her overcome her addiction. She’d tried over and over until Amanda had finally driven her away, and if the truth came out, she was going to drive John away, too.</p><p>            <em>I’m going to fail both of them. Again. </em></p><p>“Amanda, put the gun down. Please,” Jill said gently.</p><p>            “Go get help,” Lynn implored, taking a step toward Jill and reaching for her arm. “Please, get—”</p><p>            “<em>Shut up!</em>” Amanda cried, leveling the gun at Lynn’s forehead. “Don’t touch her!” Slowly, Lynn lowered her hand. Jill was already standing too close to her for comfort, while Amanda’s hand was shaking. If she fired, she couldn’t be sure she would hit the right person.</p><p>            “Lynn?”</p><p>            Amanda’s mouth went dry at the sound of Jeff’s voice. It was coming from just outside in the hallway, and his footsteps were approaching rapidly.</p><p>            “Jeff!” Lynn cried, turning toward her husband’s voice.</p><p>            Amanda kept the gun as steady as she could with her hand trembling. Her pulse pounded in her throat. This was the only chance she would have to act on Hoffman’s demand. If she didn’t fire, everything she had was going to disappear.</p><p>            Jill took a step toward her, hands raised, putting herself between Amanda and Lynn.</p><p>
  <em>            Fuck.</em>
</p><p>            “Jill, stop.”</p><p>            Amanda glanced to John as he spoke. He looked so feeble, lying there on the thin hospital bed, his head bleeding through the thin strips of cloth wrapped around it. There was fear in his eyes. Amanda had never seen it there before.</p><p>            Jill watched John, her mouth opening and then closing again. She had gone pale. She had to know what he did—what his games were. But Amanda supposed this was the first time she had ever seen one in motion.</p><p>            The sound of shifting plastic entered the air, and Amanda looked back toward the doorway as Jeff Denlon rushed through the curtain. Blood streaked his shirt and his right cheek. His gaze swept the room, and his expression grew wild with anger and alarm. He raised his hand—Amanda realized that he, too, was holding a gun.</p><p>
  <em>            Shit. </em>
</p><p>            Her mind clicked into overdrive, and as Lynn rushed toward Jeff, throwing her arms around him, Amanda took aim at the back of her head.</p><p>            “Don’t do anything stupid,” she told Jeff. He looked from her to John to Jill and back again, and Amanda could almost see the lightbulb flick on in his mind. He disentangled Lynn’s arms from around him carefully, keeping the gun away from her, and pushed her behind him, back through the curtain.</p><p>            The urge to shoot Jeff flicked through Amanda’s mind. But he had passed his test by arriving here, and killing him presented the same problem as killing Lynn—Amanda would be railing against John’s plans, proving to him that she wasn’t a worthy successor to his legacy, just as Hoffman had been telling her for so long.</p><p><em>            I can’t let him win, </em>Amanda thought. <em>I deserve to carry on John’s work. Not him. </em> </p><p>            In her moment of hesitation, Jeff lunged for Jill. Jill leapt to the side, struggling to move out of his range. She crashed into the counter beside the door, and a tray laden with scalpels clattered to the floor at her feet. She jumped, moving her left foot out of the way just before one of the blades could reach it. Jeff grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her toward him, pulling her in front of him as she struggled in his grasp. Jill clenched her teeth, attempting to stomp on Jeff’s feet until he pressed the gun to her temple. She went still.</p><p>            Amanda saw movement at the edge of her vision—John was sitting up. Swearing under her breath, she moved closer to him, her free hand moving out to steady him. “Lie back down,” she muttered. He ignored her. Amanda trained the gun on Jeff’s forehead, but her focus kept returning to the woman in front of him. Jill was staring at John with tears in her eyes.</p><p>            “Jeff, I need you to think this through,” John began slowly. His typical confidence had returned to his voice. Amanda understood immediately: if he downplayed how much he cared for Jill, Jeff might abandon his attempt to use her. Or he might use the one bullet they had placed in that gun to kill her. John was going to utilize every bit of leverage he had to talk Jeff down.</p><p>            “Me, think this through? What about what you’ve done to me—to <em>us</em>?” Jeff’s gaze flicked toward the doorway, and Amanda could make out Lynn’s shape beyond the plastic curtain.</p><p>            <em>Run. I dare you. Set the collar off and save me the trouble. </em></p><p>“Think about your family,” John insisted. He was trying hard to remain calm, to keep up the façade that this game was under his control, but Amanda could hear hostility seeping into his words. “If you harm that woman, I can assure you that you will never see your daughter again.”</p><p>            Jeff faltered, frowning as he watched John. “Corbett,” he said, his hand tightening on Jill’s upper arm. She winced. “What have you done with her?” Jeff demanded.</p><p>            “Let Jill go, and you can face your final test. You can find Corbett.”</p><p>            “<em>Enough tests!</em>” Jeff shouted. “Let us walk out of here and tell us where you’ve taken our daughter, or I swear to God, I will blow her head off.”</p><p>            He nodded to Jill, who closed her eyes tightly, tears slipping down her cheeks and onto the blue fabric of her shirt. The muzzle of Jeff’s gun was pressed tight against her skin, and hands were at her sides, tightening into fists and relaxing again on a loop.</p><p>            <em>No, </em>Amanda thought. <em>He’s not losing her, too. </em></p><p>            “Are you willing to risk that?” John asked quietly. “Because if you harm Jill, your daughter will die. I promise you.”</p><p>            “Jeff, let her go,” Lynn pleaded through the curtain. “Think about Corbett.”</p><p>            Jeff glanced back toward the doorway again, and Amanda seized her moment of opportunity. She ordered her hand to steady, aimed at Jeff’s turned head, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit Jeff just above his ear, the shot’s sound deafening in the small space. Blood and brain matter sprayed Jill, who dove to the floor, dragging herself away from him as he collapsed.</p><p>            Lynn screamed. She launched herself through the curtain and grabbed the gun that had fallen beside her husband. Amanda took aim at her.</p><p>            Something hit Amanda hard in the shoulder, but no pain registered immediately, despite the force of the impact that knocked her backward. She squeezed the trigger a second time as she fell hard to the s floor, two loud <em>booms </em>reverberating in her ears. There was screaming, and pain splintered through Amanda’s head as it made contact with the floor. For a moment, the room blurred.</p><p>            Then a sharp, burning pain spread through Amanda’s left shoulder, and she forced her head to turn toward it. A bullet was lodged there, barely visible. Her skin was torn and bloody.</p><p>            The world around Amanda drifted back into coherence slowly, and when she managed to look upward again, Jill was leaning over her, her face covered in Jeff’s blood, saying something Amanda couldn’t quite process.</p><p>            But Jill was alive. They were both alive.</p><p>            Amanda looked past her, up to John, who was leaning over the edge of his hospital bed, smiling.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter Three</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jill comes face-to-face with Agent Strahm again and has to decide how far she's willing to go to protect John.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Time was moving too quickly for Jill to process everything happening around her. Her ears rang from the gunfire, and she’d attempted to wipe the man’s blood from her face with the sleeve of her jacket after she’d crawled away from him, but she still felt its sticky warmth on her skin. Its sickly metallic taste filled her mouth, nauseating her.</p><p>            She glanced toward the woman lying on the ground in the doorway, struggling for breath as she stared at the ceiling. Jill’s instincts told her she needed to be helping this woman—Lynn, the man had said—but first, she needed to take care of the one who had just saved her life.</p><p>            She looked back down at Amanda, who was bleeding from the bullet wound in her shoulder. “Can you hear me? Amanda?” Jill squeezed her hand, watching as her former patient’s eyes roved over to John. Slowly, they returned to her, and Amanda nodded.</p><p>            At the feeling of a soft touch on her arm, just above her shoulder, she paused. She turned her head to see John looking down at her. He’d settled back against his pillow, now—she’d watched him sit up when the man had grabbed her, and at the sight of the blood on the bandages around his head, Jill had wanted to run to him. She’d seen the worry in his eyes, and she’d understood that even though he’d pushed her out of his life, he still cared for her, was still fighting for her, even when he looked an inch from death himself.</p><p>            She tried to ignore the slight buzzing of her skin at the touch.</p><p>            “We need to talk about a lot of things, Jill,” John said gently. “But you should know that Agent Strahm will be arriving any minute. You and Amanda need to get out of here.”</p><p>            Jill’s heart skipped a beat. “Agent Strahm?” she repeated. “You know him?”</p><p>            “I planned… to test him tonight.”</p><p>            Jill closed her eyes and inhaled. <em>How many people are you testing? </em>she wanted to ask. <em>And why? What are you doing to them? I spent all day lying to Strahm to protect you, and you had him in your sights the whole time? You never needed my help, did you? </em>But if the agent was on his way to the plant, she knew she didn’t have time to ask John every question eating at her mind. She would have to save them for later. She nodded stiffly and shrugged out of her jacket as she turned back to Amanda.</p><p>            “I’m going to wrap this around your shoulder. I need you to hold pressure on it while I help John up, and then we can get out of here.”</p><p>            “Sounds good,” Amanda mumbled. Her eyes were more focused than they had been when Jill had arrived at her side. She closed them for a moment, letting out a hiss.</p><p>            “You’re going to be okay.” Jill leaned closer, sliding an arm around Amanda to help her sit up slightly. Amanda clung to her, taking a deep breath as though preparing to say something and then letting it out again. Jill slipped the jacket beneath her before lowering her to the floor. As carefully as possible, she tied the garment around Amanda’s shoulder. Jill murmured an apology when Amanda winced.</p><p>            “You two go,” said John. “We’re out of time.”</p><p>            Jill whipped around to face him. “I came here for you, John. To warn you that the FBI was closing in on you.” He frowned, and she continued before he could interrupt her. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you already knew. But no, we’re not leaving without you.”</p><p>            John’s expression softened slightly. “I appreciate that very much. But there is more at work here than I can explain, and I won’t risk your safety again.”</p><p>            “Isn’t that my—?”</p><p>            At the sound of footsteps approaching from the hallway, tension shot through Jill like an electric current. She watched as Lynn, who was clutching her bleeding stomach wound where she lay on the floor, turned her head toward the sound.</p><p>            “Help,” Lynn called weakly. Her face was tear-streaked, and one of her hands was entwined with that of the man lying beside her, whose head rested in a pool of his own blood.</p><p>            As the footsteps quickened, Jill shifted her focus toward the plastic curtain. An arm slipped through its strips, parting them, and then the familiar face of Agent Strahm came into view. His features were sharp, his mouth twisted into a scowl, and his white shirt spattered with blood. He’d told Jill during her interrogation that it belonged to his partner, who was in the hospital, fighting for her life. Jill pushed this memory from her mind—she couldn’t afford to think about the people John had hurt, right now.</p><p>            She refocused on Strahm. He held a pistol, and his gaze swept the room from Lynn to the trio gathered at the hospital bed. As he looked to Jill, her body went rigid.</p><p>            “Guess I’ll keep your name on that indictment,” Strahm said, his eyes narrowing.</p><p>            “She’s not the one you’re looking for, Agent Strahm,” said John. “I am.”</p><p>            Jill shot him a look—<em>This isn’t the time for your misguided nobility. </em>But John continued to watch Strahm, his expression surprisingly serene.</p><p>            Strahm laughed flatly. “Don’t worry. There’s room in the squad car for all of you.”</p><p>            When she felt a cool touch on her hand, Jill turned toward the contact. Amanda’s fingers enclosed her own, and she nodded toward where her gun had fallen just a few feet away from Jill’s right foot.</p><p>            <em>I can’t use that, </em>Jill wanted to scream. <em>I’m not like you—like him. </em></p><p>            “Hands behind your head, Jill.”</p><p>            She closed her eyes, and behind her lids, she saw the cold interrogation room, vacant apart from a table, two chairs, and a mirror she’d been certain was also a window, where she’d sat for most of the afternoon. She saw Strahm’s hand making impact just beside her head. He’d backed her against the white tile wall as he’d leered at her, his face inches from hers, demanding she give him information on John, but that hadn’t been the first time he’d gotten too close. That had begun while she’d still been seated at the table, when he’d leaned over her after she’d insisted this part of John’s life had nothing to do with her. Strahm had told her, “Every detail we unearth about your hall-of-fame psychopath husband points to you as a possible accomplice.” She’d taken care to remind him that John was her <em>ex</em>-husband and that all of this—the bodies, the traps, the blood—had nothing to do with her.</p><p>            <em>I proved him right. I couldn’t stay away. </em></p><p>She had come here to protect John, not to hurt anyone. Regardless of how much she hated what he had become, she loved him, and damn it, she couldn’t let him die in prison. He was already suffering—one glance at him lying there in the hospital bed, bleeding through his bandages, reminded her of that—and she couldn’t let Strahm take him. If the agent had been so eager to threaten violence against her, she didn’t trust him not to <em>commit </em>violence against John.</p><p>            “Don’t make me ask again,” said Strahm from the doorway. Jill heard him shift, and she turned her head enough to see him kneeling to check on Lynn in her periphery. Lynn was crying softly, and Jill knew she was going to have to fail this woman if she was going to save John and Amanda.</p><p>            She looked back to John. He was watching her, his hand still extended from when he’d touched her arm, with the hint of a smile on his lips. He wasn’t going to advise or command her; he was leaving the choice to her entirely, and although Jill suspected that was because he hadn’t planned to make it out of this room alive and didn’t entirely mind the idea of Strahm shooting him, it was almost a relief to feel like something about their lives was in her hands, for once.</p><p>            “Okay,” she said. Slowly, she started to turn toward Strahm. As she moved, she observed the agent: he was still leaning over Lynn, who had started to cough, her hand drenched in the blood pouring from her stomach. In the instant before Strahm’s eyes returned to Jill, she reached for the gun beside her.</p><p>            Jill moved as quickly as she could, raising the weapon and aiming it at the agent. Strahm stared at her, a bitter grin sliding onto his mouth. “Looking to raise the charge from ‘accessory to murder’? With how much you were distancing yourself from your ‘<em>ex</em>’-husband earlier, I’m surprised.”</p><p>            “Just let us out of here,” said Jill. The words reminded her of the ones spoken by the dead man on the floor, and the thought dizzied her.</p><p>            “You don’t want to play this game with me.” Strahm raised his weapon higher, pointing it at her. As Jill stared down the gun’s barrel, she was certain, for the second time that night, that the person aiming at her would fire without a second thought. This time, she was armed, but she didn’t know if she could pull the trigger.</p><p>            Behind her, she heard Amanda sit up with a pained exhale. Footsteps followed as she stood, and she laid a hand briefly on Jill’s shoulder as she made her way around the bed. Strahm’s gaze flicked toward her and then back to Jill, who heard Amanda’s steps retreat and then return a few moments later. Jill didn’t dare turn her head, but she saw in her periphery that Amanda had retrieved a wheelchair.</p><p>            “Come on,” Amanda told John quietly.</p><p>            “How about everybody stays put?” Strahm demanded, his tone hard. “Who else is here? Is one of your ‘games’ still going?”</p><p>            Something moved behind him, through the curtain, and Jill forced herself not to react.</p><p>            Strahm shifted his aim to John, and her heart jumped into her throat.</p><p>            “Are you listening now? Put it down, Jill, or I’ll—”</p><p>            In one movement, someone burst through the curtain and wrapped an arm around Strahm’s throat. An instant later, Jill’s mind processed the severe square face of Mark Hoffman. He tightened his grip, and Strahm choked, pulling at the arm around his neck in a futile attempt to free himself. Jill recalled sitting in the same interrogation room with Hoffman just after John’s identity had come out to the public. Hoffman had needed to keep up the act of a straitlaced police officer, but Jill had already known he was one of John’s apprentices.</p><p>            Hoffman held Strahm still and managed to disarm him, sliding his weapon across the floor, past where Jill sat. She allowed herself to look away from Strahm at last as Amanda reached out to help John out of his bed.</p><p>            John didn’t move. “Don’t forget Lynn, Amanda.”</p><p>            Amanda’s shoulders tensed. She frowned and turned her head toward where Lynn lay. She then glanced to Hoffman, and an emotion Jill couldn’t identify flickered across her face. Amanda pulled something from her pocket—a key, Jill realized—and approached Lynn, who attempted to withdraw from her. Amanda laid a hand on her shoulder to hold her still, kneeling at her side. Hoffman stared at Amanda over the shoulder of the thrashing Agent Strahm, and when Amanda lifted the unlocked collar from Lynn’s neck and set it on the floor, Lynn closed her eyes, letting out a long breath.</p><p>            After watching Hoffman for another moment, Amanda addressed Jill. “Let’s go.”</p><p>            Trembling, Jill pushed herself to her feet, still holding tight to the gun in her hand as her pulse pounded in her ears. She moved to the other side of the hospital bed, and after Amanda had removed John’s heart monitor, Jill wrapped an arm around him and helped Amanda guide him into the wheelchair. John thanked them quietly, and Amanda steered the chair toward the door on the side of the room opposite where Hoffman and Strahm still struggled.</p><p>            “We know—who you are,” Strahm called between gasps for air. “All—of you!”</p><p>            Her breath unsteady and her head still spinning from what she realized too late must be shock, Jill followed John and Amanda out. They led her into the hallway beyond the makeshift operating room, and she kept her focus straight ahead. Beyond Amanda, she saw John shift in his chair, reaching backward. On reflex, Jill sped up to fall in at Amanda’s side, and she didn’t pull away when John took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.</p><p>            As the pair led her through the plant, she could hear distant crashes and shouts, and she tried not to let herself think about what would happen to everyone in the room they had just left.</p><p>            “Hoffman was late,” John said quietly.</p><p>            Jill almost smiled.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter Four</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>With the plan derailed, John is forced to devise a new one.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John watched the city whip past through the passenger window of Jill’s car, his grip tight on the cool leather console between their seats. Almost every detail of his plan had changed or collapsed completely over the past hour. He’d had no intention of leaving the meatpacking plant alive, and he’d made the necessary preparations for his death. He’d left his lawyer a box to give to Jill after his passing, and in it, he’d stored the details of a final game, along with the tape in which he’d finally admitted how much she still meant to him. “<em>If you’re watching this, Jill, I’m long gone from this world. You are my heart. You always have been. You always will be.</em>”</p><p>            He’d swallowed a separate tape to be recovered during his autopsy: a warning for Hoffman that he, too, would be tested. The details of that test had been in Jill’s box. John had planned to leave this last game to her to handle in his place. Hoffman enjoyed brutality, enjoyed tossing test subjects around like ragdolls instead of treating them with the dignity befitting human beings. And it had become increasingly clear to John that Hoffman was determined to remove Amanda from the picture through whatever means necessary. He was breaking the rules at every turn, and John couldn’t allow him to go untested.</p><p>            But if Hoffman hadn’t arrived at the plant when he had, John wasn’t certain what would have happened, which unsettled him deeply. He prided himself on his ability to anticipate the human mind and to out-plan the people around him. But he hadn’t expected Jill to show up, and, given the tension that had been evident between her and Agent Strahm, John hadn’t trusted Strahm not to fire his weapon. Now he owed Hoffman for ensuring that that hadn’t happened—for helping keep Jill safe, even though John doubted that detail had mattered to him at all, and for handling Strahm so that the group could escape.</p><p>            The car came to a halt. John turned toward Jill as she shut off the engine. Her fingertips skimmed over the key hanging at her neck, and his chest clenched.</p><p>            “Get whatever you need,” he said. “Just remember, we don’t have much time.”</p><p>            Jill nodded. “I’ll be back soon.” She pulled her car keys from the ignition and stepped out, shutting the door behind her and starting off through the darkness toward her apartment building. John tried not to let himself wonder what it looked like inside—which of their possessions and photographs and memories she kept around, now that he had pushed her so far away.</p><p>            A few minutes passed before Amanda spoke up from the backseat.</p><p>            “Where are we going?”</p><p>            John leaned against the headrest and closed his eyes. Lynn had urged Amanda repeatedly to take him to the hospital for his operation, but Amanda and John had known that was impossible. They couldn’t risk arrest by walking into somewhere so public. But there was a bullet in Amanda’s shoulder, and while John hadn’t anticipated the aftermath of his surgery being a problem he’d have to deal with, he found himself still alive with an open head wound that was bleeding through its bandages. He would have to call in Dr. Gordon to help them, when they reached somewhere safe.</p><p>            Now that the authorities had located the meatpacking plant, they would surely think to search every other building John had designed. Amanda had left her home to stay with him at the plant as his illness had progressed, and if Agent Strahm survived his test and exposed Jill as an accomplice, they couldn’t return to her apartment again.</p><p><em>            We’re running out of options. What about… the farm? </em>The words stuck in John’s throat. He’d betrayed Jill’s trust by using her parents’ farm as the location for one of his first games without her knowledge. There were still bodies in the barn, and the idea of her discovering them there turned his blood cold.</p><p>            Still, he didn’t see another option, at the moment. It would be a risky choice, as word of Jill’s involvement would get out sooner or later even if Strahm didn’t leave the plant. But John hoped that the buildings he’d worked on as a civil engineer would draw the authorities’ focus and that the long-abandoned farm would be the last place anyone would look for the three fugitives.</p><p>            “If it’s all right with Jill,” he told Amanda, “her parents’ farm.”</p><p>            “And if it’s not?”</p><p>            He inhaled. “We’ll find somewhere.”</p><p>            He heard her shift, and he glanced back at her as she leaned her head against the window, looking out toward the building where Jill had disappeared. “I know she means a lot to you. But do you really think she wants to be part of all this?”</p><p>            “I think she’s made her decision. She risked everything by coming to warn us about Agent Strahm, and she helped you tonight in a way you may not realize.”</p><p>            “I did appreciate her wrapping the wound.”</p><p>            John laughed quietly and gazed out the front windshield, at the headlights of the passing cars cutting through the night beside them. “You passed your test, Amanda.”</p><p>            She let out a sharp breath. John kept his focus straight ahead, watching the traffic and the flickering green neon sign of the restaurant across the street from Jill’s apartment building.</p><p>            “<em>My </em>test?”</p><p>            “You needed to learn how to save a life. I intended for Lynn to help you with that—that’s why I insisted she was important. Important <em>to you</em>. I wanted you to let her go.”</p><p>            Silence filled the car. After a few moments, John heard the nervous tapping of Amanda’s foot against the floorboard. “I shot Lynn,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.</p><p>            “Not because you wanted to hurt her,” John told her gently. “You didn’t pull the trigger until you knew she was about to shoot you. And more importantly, when the time came and you had the choice to hurt Lynn or to help someone else, you chose to save Jill from Jeff. You saved her life, Amanda. And she saved yours. I am indebted to you both.”</p><p>            “I can’t believe you tested me again,” Amanda snapped. “Do you want me to trust you, John? How can I if you’re going to keep putting me through hell when I think I’m safe with you?”</p><p>            “Listen to me.” He shifted in his seat, angling his body to face her as much as he could manage while he still felt so weak. Despite her anger with him, Amanda leaned toward him from the rear seat on the driver’s side, clearly trying to meet him halfway. She was pale, and the jacket Jill had tied around her shoulder was saturated with blood. “I don’t need to test you again,” John continued. “You showed me tonight that you know how to give someone the gift of life. I believe in you, and I believe that you are the right person to carry on my work when I’m gone.”</p><p>            Amanda gave him a small, strained smile.</p><p>            The car’s trunk opened, and she jumped. She settled back against her seat, looking out the window again. When the trunk slammed shut, John watched as Jill made her way around to the driver’s seat. She opened the door and climbed in, letting out a heavy breath as she slid the car key back into the ignition. She’d let her curly blond hair out of its ponytail since she’d gone into the apartment, and she’d washed the blood from her skin, though it still stained her shirt.</p><p>            “Now what?” she asked, looking to John, her expression resigned. In his mind’s eye, he saw a flash of the way she’d looked at him in his workshop on the day he’d smashed the three-hundred-year-old clock he’d once treasured. On the day he’d told her not to come back. She’d looked at him like she hadn’t recognized him, and there was something of that unknowable distance in her eyes now, though she seemed to be trying to hide it.</p><p>            “I hate to ask this of you, Jill, but could we stay at the farm? At least until we figure out somewhere more permanent?”</p><p>            Jill looked down at the steering wheel, frowning slightly. “It’s… probably safer there than somewhere in the city. Yes, that’s fine.” She started the car and pulled out of her parking spot, glancing in the rearview mirror frequently as she drove. John knew she wasn’t accustomed to checking over her shoulder all the time, like he and Amanda were. As he understood that Jill would have to get used to this feeling because of him, he felt a stab of self-loathing.</p><p>
  <em>            I never wanted this life for you. I intended for you to handle Hoffman and then be free of all of this. Of me.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter Five</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>John's apprentices converge at Tuck's Pig Farm.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Almost done.”</p><p>             Amanda nodded, clenching her teeth, and continued staring at the white popcorn ceiling as Dr. Lawrence Gordon dug the bullet from her shoulder. Jill was squeezing her hand, and John sat in his wheelchair across the kitchen, giving them room. Amanda lay on the polished wooden table, on top of the towels Jill had dug out of the closets. On the drive out of the city, while Amanda had been sitting in the backseat and fighting to conceal her anger at the realization that she’d been tested again, Jill had explained that she’d inherited this property after her parents had died. The farm had been shut down by then—an outbreak of Aujeszky’s disease in the pigs had seen to that. But Jill’s parents had continued living in the farmhouse even after the business had shut down, and she and John had left almost everything intact when ownership of the property had passed to them, planning to deal with it all eventually. Then the divorce had taken John out of the picture, and Jill had been too overwhelmed by her work to care about the house.</p><p>             Amanda was grateful that they had never gotten around to packing everything away. She hadn’t minded staying at the meatpacking plant to take care of John, but the idea of sleeping in a real house with decent furniture that night was unbelievably appealing.</p><p>            When John had borrowed Jill’s phone in the car, needing to message someone to come tend to their injuries, Amanda hadn’t been sure what to expect. And when Dr. Gordon had walked through the door, leaning on the cane that had supported him since he’d sawed off his foot during the first game Amanda had helped John set up, she’d grown suddenly nauseous. She’d been almost certain that he had survived his game—his body had vanished by the time she’d gone back to the bathroom to end Adam’s suffering—but finding out that he’d been helping John all this time without her knowledge unsettled her. Hoffman had already sewn doubts in her mind about her place as John’s successor. She didn’t need another apprentice to compete with.</p><p>            The pressure in Amanda’s shoulder shifted, and she squeezed Jill’s hand tighter. The local anesthesia Dr. Gordon had given her numbed the pain, but it was still uncomfortable to feel him poking around beneath her skin.</p><p>            He withdrew his hands, and a moment later, Amanda heard him set the bullet down on the table near her arm. She held still as the unpleasant pressure returned, more persistent this time, and she realized he was stitching up her wound. She glanced to her right, to Jill, whose brown eyes were fixed on the doctor’s work. She looked a bit disoriented, and Amanda understood. Amanda was used to this world of violence and injuries and death. Jill was used to a different kind of violence—the fights that broke out at the clinic where she fought to save people from themselves.</p><p>            An image of Cecil’s terrified face flashed through Amanda’s mind. She’d been waiting for him while he’d robbed Jill’s clinic—it had been her idea for him to steal the methadone that night, no matter how hard she tried to forget that part. When he’d run out, clearly petrified by what he had done to Jill and to her child, Amanda had known she would never be able to rid herself of the guilt that came with hurting someone who had been kind to her.</p><p>            She tightened her grip on Jill’s hand, hoping she took the movement as a reflexive one as Dr. Gordon’s needle pulled at the skin of Amanda’s shoulder. Jill looked away from the procedure to smile down at her for a moment, and Amanda had to look away. She stared at the ceiling, listening as Dr. Gordon set his needle down on the small metal tray he’d brought with him. She felt him bandage the wound and exhaled when he’d finished.</p><p>            “How are you feeling?” he asked her.</p><p>            “Like I’ve been shot.”</p><p>            Dr. Gordon chuckled. “Yes, well, you’re lucky it hit where it did. This could have gone a lot worse.”</p><p>            “Thanks for that, Doc. That’s what I needed to hear.”</p><p>            He raised a blond brow, watching Amanda, and heat flooded her cheeks. She could see what he wanted to say on his face—<em>At least you got out with all your body parts. </em>Before he could comment, she sat up, which mercifully drew Jill into the conversation.</p><p>            “Take it easy. You lost a lot of blood—you should rest.”</p><p>            “I’m okay. Thank you. I need to get out of the way so the doc can help John.”</p><p>            Jill sighed, but she reached out to steady Amanda, slipping an arm around her to help her to her feet. Amanda swayed as the room around her spun, and she clung to Jill’s shoulder, pulling in a deep breath.</p><p>            “I’m okay,” she said again, trying to persuade herself to believe it. Slowly, Amanda released her hold on Jill and stepped away from the kitchen table. She felt Dr. Gordon’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look back at him. Instead, she looked to John, who was still wearing his hospital gown and the bandages Lynn had wrapped around his head.</p><p>            For an instant, Amanda allowed herself to wonder what had happened to Lynn. Hoffman had been in the room with her when the group had left—what would he do with her, after he put Strahm into his trap? Amanda was certain Hoffman would lead the police to Lynn’s daughter whether the mother survived or not; he would want to look like a hero. Luckily, Amanda had warned the girl not to trust him. She could only hope the girl took the warning to heart and started the police down the trail that led to Hoffman. Now that John, Amanda, and Jill needed to lie low, a distraction for the authorities would be ideal.</p><p>            Amanda slipped on a smile. “Your turn,” she told John as she moved to his side. She hadn’t forgiven him for testing her again, but she still worried for him, after everything he’d been through that night.</p><p>            John nodded. “As soon as Mark gets here with the supplies we left behind.”</p><p>            Amanda’s smile fell away as quickly as it had come. “He’s coming here?”</p><p>            “Yes. He won’t be staying with us—I’ve given him a few things to take care of. Is that a problem?”</p><p>            John’s expression was neutral, and Amanda couldn’t tell what he was thinking. <em>Yes, </em>she wanted to scream, <em>that’s a big problem. You see it, don’t you? You have to see how much he hates me. What he’s trying to do to me.</em></p><p>            “Of course not,” she said instead. “I’ll go wait to show him in.”</p><p>            Without another glance at anyone, she made her way out of the kitchen, feeling three sets of eyes watching her as she walked. She was still lightheaded, but she willed her movements to remain steady, determined to prove that she didn’t need any more help.</p><p>            The hallway walls were painted white, and photographs still hung every few feet, their frames covered in dust. Several of them were of Jill—even in the photos from her childhood, Amanda recognized her features—and there were a few of John, as well. Amanda’s gaze landed on an image of the two of them beaming, John in a suit with a black tie and Jill in her wedding dress and veil. John’s hair was brown in the photo instead of the white it had become, and he looked happier than Amanda had ever seen him.</p><p>            Her hands balled into fists as she made her way down the hall and out the front door, which she closed behind her with more force than necessary. The scream of insects greeted her, along with the whispering of the wind through the trees. Amanda almost missed the screeching brakes and wailing sirens of the city. She was out of her element here.</p><p>            She leaned against one of the porch’s white wooden columns, stared out into the darkness in front of the farmhouse, and told herself it was ridiculous to be jealous of Jill. Amanda had avoided asking more questions than necessary about the Kramers’ marriage, since she’d been working with John; she knew the divorce was a sore spot for him. From what she understood, while the loss of Gideon had devastated him and made him feel as though he’d needed to shut himself off from Jill, he still regretted doing so. Every time Amanda found herself around them both, she could feel it buzzing in the air between them—the remorse. The longing.</p><p>            Normally, this wouldn’t bother her. But when Hoffman was already trying to take her place, having an extra person around to complicate things was more frustrating than she wanted to admit.</p><p>            A pair of headlights cut through the dark yard, and Amanda raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sudden flood of brightness. Her stomach churned, and her first thought was of the gun they had brought with them from the meatpacking plant. It was too far away—in the trunk of Jill’s car, closer to the approaching vehicle than to Amanda.</p><p>            She held still and waited as a small car pulled up the driveway and came to a halt behind the two already parked there. The headlights shut off, and a dark figure stepped out of the driver’s seat. Amanda tensed as the door closed, and when the figure started toward the wooden porch steps, she pushed off of the column, folding her arms across her chest. The movement pulled at the fresh stitches lining her shoulder, and she hissed softly.</p><p>            Hoffman came into view as he climbed the steps, the lights spilling through the house’s windows bathing him in a yellowish glow.</p><p>            “Hello, Amanda.”</p><p>            The same words had greeted her when she’d awoken with the reverse beartrap on her head and the taste of blood in her mouth, spoken then by John on a prerecorded tape. The idea that Hoffman might have been involved with her initial test in any capacity made her blood boil.</p><p>            “Detective,” she greeted him. “Did you lead your cop friends to the Denlon kid?”</p><p>            “Not yet. I wanted to tie a couple of loose ends first.” Hoffman lifted a navy duffel bag into the light and gave it a small shake. “Somebody forgot the oxygen for John. And a piece of bone. That seems dangerously incompetent.”</p><p>            Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “Why waste time? Go help him. Make yourself useful.”</p><p>            “Well, someone has to.” Hoffman smirked, raising a dark brow, and Amanda fought down the urge to punch him.</p><p>            “Just remember what I told you before,” she said, taking a step closer to stare up into his smug face. The porch creaked beneath her feet, and she kept her eyes on Hoffman’s even when he glanced down at the bandage on her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”</p><p>            Hoffman chuckled and leaned down toward her. “I really don’t think you’re ‘cherishing your life’ by ignoring what I ask of you,” he mumbled into her ear. She shuddered. “What do you think will happen when he finds out what you did to Jill and their son? Do you think you’ll be safe?”</p><p>            “I’d be more worried about myself, if I were you,” Amanda said quietly. “I think you’re due for a test.” She turned away and pulled open the door, stepping back to hold it as Hoffman brushed past her and stepped into the house. She felt her pulse in her throat even after his footsteps had retreated down the hallway.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter Six</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Agent Strahm awakens with his head in a trap. Meanwhile, Jill tries to find a new normal in her old family home.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Peter Strahm was aware of several things at the moment he awoke. He was sitting down, held upright by something heavy attached to his neck, and the room around him was dark beyond the smudged glass pane in front of his face. As his eyes roved the glass, he began to process that it was one side of a cube bound by metal edges.</p><p>            A cube that encased his head.</p><p>            Peter’s hands flew upward, feeling around for a way to remove the box, but he could find nothing. Whoever had shoved him into it—the same person who had choked him from behind when he’d been moments away from getting Jill Tuck to drop her gun, if he had to guess—hadn’t left him a clear way to free himself. The rubber encircling his neck at the bottom of the box was too tight for him to slip his head out through.</p><p>            <em>It’s not designed to let me out. </em></p><p>            The thought kicked his mind into overdrive.</p><p>“<em>Hey!</em>” he cried, shifting his grip to the top corners of the cube, which stretched a few inches above his head. “<em>Help!</em>” He banged on the metal edge beneath his right hand, hoping to find some mechanism to trigger to release himself.</p><p>            Dim lights flicked on, and Peter saw only dingy walls and cracked concrete columns. He was certain he was still somewhere within the meatpacking plant. He felt a chair beneath him, holding him up, but he couldn’t see anything below the box’s bottom.</p><p>            “<em>Help!</em>” he shouted on a loop. His feet scrabbled against the floor, but the cube held him in place. His pulse thundered in his temples. He felt along the box’s lower corners, desperate to find a hinge or some other indication that the contraption could be opened. He turned his head as far as he could manage, and when he spotted two tubes attached to the top of the box, running upward, he followed them with his gaze. Each tube was connected to a separate tank of water that hung from the ceiling.</p><p>            A loud, guttural scream ripped its way from Peter’s throat. He thrashed against the trap, but the movements did nothing to help him. The rubber cuff around his neck scraped at his skin.  </p><p>            <em>Have to call for help.</em></p><p>            He reached for his pockets, but he found them empty apart from a single pen. As he scanned the area, his eyes landed on a rusted barrel sitting nearby. His cell phone was flipped open on top of it, lying beside his flashlight, his pocketknife, and his Glock. He couldn’t call for backup. Couldn’t slip the knife between the box’s panels to find a weakness.</p><p>            His heart pounding at a sickening pace, Peter continued roving the cube with his hands, searching for something—anything—that might free him.</p><p>            Suddenly, a loud whirring sound reached him from overhead, followed by that of water draining, trickling down behind him on either side. His chest tightened. He glanced downward to find that the water filtering in through the tubes was pooling at the bottom of the cube.</p><p>            As the level rose past the rubber restraining his neck, Peter felt the cold touch of the water against his skin, and he tilted his head backward, fighting to keep his chin above the surface.</p><p>            “<em>No!</em>”</p><p>            He tightened his grip on the edges of the box, struggling harder, his breath fogging the glass in front of him. The water rose higher, slipping into his mouth, and he spat it out again and again. Despite his resistance, the icy liquid crept steadily upward. Peter alternated holding his breath and stretching his neck as far as he could manage, lifting his mouth above the surface to gasp for air. He banged at the box as it filled, the muscles in his neck screaming as he strained to keep his mouth and nose above water, and then, finally, he was submerged.</p><p>            He held his breath until his lungs ached. As he strained to keep his eyes open beneath the water, still slamming his palms against the box, one thought looped through his mind: he couldn’t let Jigsaw win. He couldn’t allow John Kramer and his band of psychopaths to kill him for doing his job—to take him out of the picture so they could continue their sick games unchecked.</p><p>            Peter Strahm would not die like this.</p><p>            His hands fumbled down to his pockets. At first, he couldn’t recall where he’d left the pen—the world around him was growing harder to focus on by the second—and when his fingers managed to close around it, his stomach lurched. But there was no real choice to be made. He wanted to live, no matter what it cost him.</p><p>            He clicked the pen and held it out to the side, bracing himself for a moment. Then, as the burning in his lungs grew too strong to bear, he drew the pen toward him and pushed it through the skin of his throat. Shutting his eyes against the blinding pain that shot outward from the incision, he worked quickly to unscrew the end of the pen and toss it to the floor, along with the ink refill. With only the empty tube left, Peter drew in a desperate breath, feeling the heat of blood trickling down his neck from the new hole in his skin as air slipped into his lungs at last. His head was still submerged, and he couldn’t escape from the box on his own, but he could breathe.</p><p>            He was going to survive this. And he was going to make John Kramer and every single one of his accomplices pay.</p><p>***</p><p>Jill slid her hands along the satin surface of the comforter, smoothing out the last of its wrinkles before taking a step back to admire her work. The full-sized bed in her childhood room had been bare when the group had entered the farmhouse, and Jill had dug enough blankets out of the storage closets to cover this bed and two others—the one in her parents’ old room and the one in her brother’s. She’d used the heavy navy blankets that had always been her mother’s favorite for the master bedroom, and for her own, she’d found the maroon set she’d left behind when she’d moved out to live with John. She reached out to fluff one of the pillows in its color-coordinated case, and for a moment, she could almost persuade herself that this house was alive again, not just a ghost summoned for a temporary visit.</p><p>            She’d sensed the tension between Amanda and Hoffman as soon as the latter had walked in, and while she’d wanted to sit with John while the doctor worked on his head, she’d realized she couldn’t stomach seeing him in such a vulnerable state. So instead, she’d left Dr. Gordon to his work, trusting that Amanda would let her know if she was needed for anything. She’d heard the front door open and close a little while later, and as she’d listened to the remaining voices from across the house, she’d gathered that Hoffman had been the one who’d left.</p><p>            “<em>I’ve given him a few things to take care of</em>,” John had said. Jill wouldn’t allow herself to think about what those things might be. She’d already had a gun pressed to her temple that night—already tasted the blood of a man shot inches from her face. She had enough reasons not to sleep.</p><p>            “Hey Jill?”</p><p>            At the sound of Amanda’s tentative voice from downstairs, Jill turned away from the bed, crossing the white-carpeted room swiftly to the door. She stepped out into the hallway and followed it to the edge of the steps. Amanda stood at the bottom, her short sleeve still pushed up over her freshly bandaged shoulder. John sat beside her in his wheelchair. His head had been rewrapped, as well, and he gazed up at Jill with exhaustion clear on his features.</p><p>            “Where, ah… where do you want us?”</p><p>            Jill heard the front door open and shut again, and she supposed Dr. Gordon was leaving. She sighed; she’d wanted to thank him for everything he’d done to help the others. She made a mental note to ask someone to pass her gratitude on to him later.</p><p>            She descended the steps, pausing in front of John and Amanda when she reached them. “Since you shouldn’t be walking any more than necessary,” she told John, “you should probably take the downstairs bedroom.”</p><p>            He gave her a small nod. “Whatever you think is best.”</p><p>            Jill moved behind him and grabbed the wheelchair’s handles. She steered it carefully down the hallway and toward the master bedroom, listening as Amanda’s footsteps trailed behind her and John. <em>She doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s not used to having someone else around to help. </em></p><p>            In the doorway, Jill paused to flick on the lights. She surveyed the navy blankets, the bedside lamps with their white, bell-shaped shades, and the hardwood floor—which was still smooth beyond its layer of dust—and nostalgia for simpler times nearly overwhelmed her. She pushed it to the back of her mind and guided John to the edge of the bed, where she parked the wheelchair.</p><p>            Jill bent down to slip an arm around him, helping him to his feet, and she recalled when she’d dropped by the plant to see him that morning. He’d been in the chair, then, when she had run into him and Amanda in the hallway. Amanda had departed at his word, giving Jill an apologetic glance she hadn’t understood on the way out, and after they had been left alone, Jill had attempted to persuade John for what had felt like the hundredth time to give up his work. Naturally, the attempt had failed. He’d stood to press the silver, heart-shaped key into her hand, telling her, “<em>When the time’s right, you’ll know what to do with it.</em>” The look in his eyes had told her that this had been a goodbye, but she had rejected it. Whether it was part of his plan or not, she had come back for him, and she was going to help him for as long as he allowed her to.</p><p>            Carefully, she helped him to the bed, and he lay back with a heavy exhale, resting his head against the pillows. “Thank you, Jill.” As his eyes met hers this time, she understood that he was thanking her for more than helping him lie down.</p><p>            She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m here if you need anything.”</p><p>            “I appreciate that very much. Amanda, you should get some rest. I’ll be fine here.”</p><p>            Jill looked toward the doorway, where Amanda still lingered, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. After the length of a heartbeat, Amanda nodded.</p><p>            “Where to?” she asked Jill.</p><p>            “Second door on the right upstairs—there’s a bed made for you.”</p><p>            “Thank you.” Amanda smiled at her and then turned away, and her footsteps retreated down the hall.</p><p>            Silence followed apart from the sound of John’s breathing. In the stillness, Jill realized that this was the first time they had been alone together since that morning, when he’d given her the key that still hung at her neck and a promise to provide a way out for her when all of this was over.</p><p>
  <em>            That’s never going to happen, now, is it? It doesn’t get to end. I’ve painted a target on my head, and I’m going down, too.</em>
</p><p>            “Would you stay for a moment?”</p><p>            “Of course.”</p><p>            Jill turned back to John. He smiled slightly, but there was sadness in his eyes.</p><p>            “I owe you an apology,” he said. “Several of them, actually.”</p><p>            Rolling her shoulders backward, Jill moved closer. She sat down at the foot of the bed on his side, angling her body toward him. “You don’t owe me anything,” she said.</p><p>            John let out a quiet laugh. He somehow looked older than he had that morning, but he was still as handsome as he’d been when she’d first fallen in love with him. “That’s not true,” he said. “I owe you my life, and so does Amanda.”</p><p>            Jill closed her eyes and swallowed. “You didn’t want me to come back. I didn’t listen. Again. I should’ve expected I’d be walking into something like—” She shook her head firmly. “You didn’t want to leave there tonight, did you?”</p><p>            She heard him sigh, and reluctantly, she opened her eyes. John was staring up at the ceiling, his expression thoughtful.</p><p>            “I had a plan in place that covered that possibility,” he said after a brief pause. “If Amanda had failed her test, she would have set off a chain reaction. The man who attacked you was Jeff Denlon—the husband of Dr. Lynn Denlon, whom Amanda was holding at gunpoint when you arrived. I wanted to give her the chance to learn how to save someone’s life instead of taking it. To let Lynn go and, therefore, to leave the Denlon family intact. I didn’t tell her that Lynn and Jeff were married.”</p><p>            Jill’s mouth went dry. “That doesn’t seem fair. Not giving her all the information.”</p><p>            “Do you think it would have changed her mind?”</p><p>            Drumming her fingers against the smooth surface of the blanket beneath her, Jill replied with a small shrug.</p><p>            “You saw what she was going to do,” John continued. “You tried to dissuade her, and so did I. If you hadn’t been there, I have no doubt that she would have killed Lynn. But you <em>were </em>there. You changed Amanda’s path tonight—you gave her something to fight for, not just something to destroy.”</p><p>            “And you were willing to let her actions kill you, if things hadn’t worked out that way? Jeff’s gun was loaded. What do you think he would have done to both of you, if Amanda had killed his wife?”</p><p>            “I’m dying anyway, Jill. You know that.”</p><p>            Tears stung her eyes, and she closed them again, pulling in a breath she hoped would steady her. It failed. “You don’t have to remind me.”</p><p>            She felt his hand rest on top of her own. His touch was cool, but, if only for a moment, it brought with it the same comfort it had when she’d fallen asleep beside him every night. For a moment, she felt as though the old John were sitting beside her again.</p><p>            “I’m sorry I dragged you into all of this,” he said. “That was the last thing I wanted.”</p><p>            Dozens of replies came to mind, but Jill couldn’t find the right words immediately. At last, she managed, “I’m glad you’re still here.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter Seven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After everyone else goes to bed, John is beset by memories.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Long after Jill had gone upstairs to sleep, John lay awake, listening to the sounds of the house. He found himself thankful that she had kept up with the utilities—when he’d suggested hiding out at the farm, he hadn’t been certain whether that would be the case, and he’d been prepared to make do with whatever situation awaited when they arrived. After all, he and Amanda had been hiding out at Gideon Meat Packing for a long while, and even before John had become confined to his bed or his wheelchair, the living quarters there hadn’t been entirely pleasant.</p><p>            But Jill had had the foresight to keep the farmhouse in working order, and whatever her reason for that, John appreciated it. That was only one of several fronts on which she’d surprised him that evening, and although he knew he should be sleeping to recover from both Lynn and Dr. Gordon tinkering with his skull, he found himself preoccupied with thoughts of his ex-wife.</p><p>* </p><p>
  <em>He sat across the smooth wooden kitchen table from her, the only sound in the room the ticking of an old clock on the wall. He knew he should say something—should find a way to fix the tangible brokenness in the air between them. But the words wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he tried. He knew it was ridiculous to blame her in any way for what had happened to Gideon, but he couldn’t rid his mind of the idea that if she only knew when to give up on someone, when to protect herself and stop giving every piece of her heart to ungrateful people, their son would be alive. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            “I can’t.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            When Jill spoke, John was almost certain that she’d read his thoughts—that she was telling him she couldn’t change who she was. He inhaled, telling himself that was ridiculous. “What do you mean?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            “I can’t do this anymore.” A blond curl had fallen from her ponytail to brush her cheek. She twisted the wedding band on her finger, and as her eyes flicked up to meet his, a cold chill washed over him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>            He’d known this day would come. A voice at the back of his mind had warned him that he should do something to prevent it, that he should fight to keep her in his life. But John found it impossible to reconnect with the man he’d been before the loss of their son, let alone to show that man to Jill. He swallowed hard. “I understand,” he said. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            She closed her eyes and lowered her head. He wanted to say more, to comfort her somehow, but his throat had gone dry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>            No matter how much he loved her, he would have to let her go. </em>
</p><p>*</p><p>
  <em>In the rearview mirror, John saw the clinic’s metal back door fly open. A man ran out, glancing over his shoulder at something inside. Within an instant, John’s mind processed the goateed face of the man in the mirror—Cecil Adams. John had broken up a fight between Cecil and another patient in the clinic’s lobby a few months earlier, after Cecil had tackled the man over a row of chairs. Jill had rushed in to break them up, throwing herself into danger to help her patients, as she always did. Afterward, John had seen Cecil standing by himself, holding a knife, and had approached him. “You don’t want to do that,” John had said, and Cecil had responded by asking him “The fuck’s your problem?” “You’re my problem,” John had told him. “And you’re becoming everybody else’s, too.” Cecil had put the knife away, but John had distrusted him immensely ever since. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            Now, Cecil’s movements were frantic as he stumbled away from the door and it slowly started to swing shut behind him. He ran a hand through his dark hair, staring into the clinic, and John’s stomach lurched. Jill was still inside. He’d been waiting to drive her home after she locked up, and he’d wondered why she’d been taking so long. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            His eyes widening with panic, John opened his car door and stepped out. He heard Cecil’s footsteps approaching and then heard them pause, and he turned toward Cecil just as the man rushed past him, darting away. John wanted to grab him by the collar and demand answers, but he couldn’t waste the time. He ran for the door and tossed it open, and the world around him blurred as he hurtled down the concrete hallway, toward the windowed double-doors at the other end. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            At the doors, he paused, pressing his palm to the window glass as he looked inside. Between this set of doors and the next pair that led to the lobby, Jill sat on the floor, crying. Blood soaked her white skirt as she clutched her protruding stomach. </em>
</p><p>*</p><p>
  <em>Grinning, John watched as Jill approached the wooden crib he’d built for their son. They were still several months away from Gideon’s birth, but John was determined to be prepared in every way he could. To give his son everything he could. He’d brought Jill to his new workshop both to show her the space—he was rather proud of it and the three-hundred-year-old clock he’d acquired as part of the deal—and to give her the gifts he’d made for her and Gideon. He watched her smile as she ran her fingers along the crib’s wooden railing, and as she turned her head toward him, her eyes bright with joy and one hand resting on her slightly rounded stomach, he couldn’t stop himself from rushing on to the second gift. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            “I got a surprise for you.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            John moved to one of his shelves, reaching between building supplies and tools and paint trays to retrieve the wooden ventriloquist puppet he’d built for Gideon. The puppet’s face was painted white with red swirls adorning his cheeks, and his black hair matched his suit while his shoes were the same red as his bowtie. John returned to Jill, whose smile widened as she looked down at the puppet in his hands. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            “I’ve been calling him Bobby,” John said, holding the small toy out to her. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>            “He’s perfect,” said Jill as she took Bobby from him carefully. She stepped closer and leaned up to give John a soft kiss, and he shut his eyes, forgetting about everything apart from her and the future they were building together. </em>
</p><p>*</p><p>He kept his eyes closed, struggling to hold this last moment in his mind. He and Jill had both been so happy on the day he’d shown her the workshop, the crib… and Bobby, whom he’d later used as a prototype for Billy, the mechanical puppet he used to speak to his test subjects.</p><p>            At the thought of his games, he found the image of Jill’s smile fading, and he fought to keep it in place, unwilling to let her go. His lips flattened into a line as he reminded himself that it was too late for that notion. He’d chosen to let her go that morning at the kitchen table, and he’d lost his chance to fight to keep her in his life.</p><p>            Hadn’t he?</p><p>            He’d asked her several times not to come back to the meatpacking plant. Demanded it, even. But she’d persisted, and she’d kept visiting him, even on the day he’d been certain he would die. He’d been grateful for her presence that morning—it had given him the opportunity to deliver the key to her himself. To hold her hand for a final time. He’d been certain that encounter had been their goodbye.</p><p>            And then Jill had shown up during Jeff’s game—Amanda’s game—and derailed everything.</p><p>            <em>Is that what she did? Or did she give me another chance to repair the damage between us before I go? </em></p><p>He held onto the blanket Jill had pulled up over him before she’d gone upstairs, wondering whether she would laugh at him if he told her he still loved her.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter Eight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Amanda stumbles upon an old game, and Peter deals with the fallout of surviving his trap.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The grass rustled beneath Amanda’s boots as she moved through the yard, away from the farmhouse. She’d managed to rest more than she’d expected, but each time she’d accidentally rolled onto her left side, pain had splintered from her wounded shoulder and she’d found it hard to get comfortable again. Several of the times she’d awoken, she’d crept downstairs and paused outside John’s door, waiting until she’d been certain his breathing was steady before returning to bed.</p><p>            She hadn’t been able to fall asleep initially until she’d heard Jill come upstairs and had convinced herself not to worry—Jill clearly cared enough about John to make sure he was taken care of before leaving him alone. But still, Amanda was used to taking more of an active role in helping him than she’d been able to since the group had left the meatpacking plant, and she didn’t understand exactly where she fit into this new arrangement.</p><p>            When she’d resigned herself to being awake for the day, she’d listened to the house before coming downstairs, waiting until she’d been certain Jill hadn’t yet left her room. It wasn’t that Amanda didn’t want to talk to her—she just had no idea what to say. Every time she opened her mouth when Jill was around, an apology almost came rushing out, and Amanda knew it was only a matter of time until something snapped inside her and she couldn’t stop the words.</p><p>
  <em>            I’m sorry I pushed Cecil to rob the clinic. I’m sorry I killed your son. </em>
</p><p>It was hard enough to keep this incriminating information to herself around John, even though she’d had almost two years of practice at it. Most of the time, she could persuade herself to focus on their work, on whatever game they were running. But being here at Jill’s family’s farm made it impossible to stop thinking about the baby. About the reason Amanda <em>deserved </em>to be tested.</p><p>            She raised the hood of the zip-up sweatshirt Hoffman had brought with him from the plant—she supposed he’d managed to do one decent thing in retrieving some of her and John’s belongings—and pulled it up over her head, slipping her hands into the hoodie’s pockets. It was still early, and the air was cool, the grass slick with dew. If nothing else, getting out of the house would give her time to think before she had to talk to anyone.</p><p>            As she made a circuit around the yard, her ears still adjusting to the lack of road noise and signs of human life beyond the property, she replayed the previous night in her mind. She thought she’d handled being around Hoffman well, apart from one moment in the kitchen shortly after he’d arrived, when he’d brushed past her to show John the contents of the duffel bag he’d brought. He’d left other items in the car, he’d said, which he would bring in soon, but he’d wanted to make sure to get the medical supplies and necessities in first, as “someone else” had left them behind. Amanda hadn’t been able to stop herself from rolling her eyes, and she’d briefly locked gazes with Jill, who had done the same. In that moment, for the first time, Amanda had felt a solidarity with her that hadn’t been about John or about getting clean. She’d felt understood.</p><p>            She’d been hoping to recapture the same feeling with John since they’d left the plant. Amanda had expected him to want to talk with her privately again, to talk about the test he’d put her through. He had to know that she was still furious with him for dropping her into a situation where her actions could very well have killed them all.</p><p>
  <em>            It wasn’t fair. How could I win a game I didn’t even know I was playing? </em>
</p><p>            Unconsciously, Amanda’s feet led her to the barn, and she slipped inside. After stumbling for a while through the dim space, with only the light filtering in through the barn’s wooden slats to guide her, she found herself in a room with a heavy concrete wall at one end. Vertical panels comprised the wall, each bisected by a dormant, bar-shaped fluorescent light, and one panel stuck out just slightly. Amanda frowned as she approached it, lowering her hood. She gave the wall a slight push, and the panel shifted inward, revealing the entrance to another room.</p><p>            <em>That doesn’t seem normal for a pig farm.</em></p><p>Amanda felt along the walls for a switch, and when she found one and flipped it, the bar-shaped lights ignited. Squaring her shoulders, she stuck her head through the newly formed opening in the wall, and she saw that the lights ran along its backside, as well, illuminating the next room.</p><p>            She stepped through the opening and immediately froze. The doors facing her at the room’s other end were made of metal, each of them embedded with multiple circular sawblades and spattered with blood.</p><p>            <em>What the hell did you do, John? Does Jill know you did it here? </em></p><p>Amanda inhaled. She was already keeping her own secrets. What would it hurt to keep one more of John’s?</p><p>            She forced her feet to move forward, toward the bloody doors.</p><p>***</p><p>Peter sat with his head bowed, his elbows resting on his knees. The hospital bed before him was vacant, its light-blue sheet rumpled and its matching pillowcase covered in blood. He glanced up at it now and then, and in the moment before his eyes settled on only emptiness and a red stain, if he tried hard enough, he could almost convince himself that he would find his partner there instead, recovering. Each time, he was disappointed. Lindsey Perez was nowhere to be found.</p><p>            In his mind’s eye, Peter could still see the room where his partner had been injured. A ventriloquist puppet with red and black eyes and swirls painted on its cheeks had awaited the two of them when they’d arrived. It had been sitting in a chair with a small tape player tied around its neck, lit candles surrounding it on the floor. Perez had played the tape, and the voice that had poured out of the player had belonged, Peter knew, to Jigsaw.</p><p>            “<em>Hello, Agent Perez,</em> <em>and welcome to the world that you have long studied. Your partner, Agent Strahm, will soon take the life of an innocent man. Heed my warning, Agent Perez. Your next move is critical.</em>”</p><p>            The recording’s volume had dropped, then, and Perez had leaned forward to hear it. Then, all at once, the puppet’s porcelain face had exploded, spraying her with shrapnel. Peter had guided her out into the hallway as she’d gasped for air, her own face bleeding in several places, and helped her to lie on the ground. He’d called for the paramedics, and he’d reassured her over and over, determined to help her in some way. He’d been certain the paramedics would find a way to fix the damage, to save her.</p><p>            And now his partner of five years was gone.</p><p>            But he hadn’t killed anyone. Not the “innocent man” Jigsaw had evidently been setting him up to kill, at least. He felt that Perez’s blood was partially on his hands due to his inability to protect her, but he hadn’t taken a life intentionally.</p><p>            He supposed the man lying on the floor with his head blown open at the meatpacking plant—eventually identified as Jeff Denlon by his wife Lynn, who had survived the “game”—had been the intended target. But someone else had gotten to Jeff first. Jill? Peter doubted it. She’d had a gun on him for quite a while and hadn’t pulled the trigger, and if he was being honest with himself, he’d given her plenty of reason to, when he’d interrogated her at the station. He’d intimidated her as much as he could, needing to break through her disinterest in cooperating with him—lives had been on the line, and Perez had been fighting for hers in the hospital, during the end of the interrogation. Peter wasn’t proud that he’d shouted in Jill’s face, thrown the table in front of her away, driven her to the wall, and pinned her there, his face inches from hers. But his patience had been worn down to nothing, and he’d strongly considered pulling his Glock on her to get her to talk. If she hadn’t taken the chance to shoot at him after all that, he doubted she’d shot Jeff in the head.</p><p>            That meant it had probably been Amanda Young, since Jigsaw hadn’t seemed to be in good enough shape to pull the trigger himself. Amanda had shot Jeff, but her doing so couldn’t have been part of the original plan—Jeff was the only person who’d fit the bill for an “innocent man.” Peter doubted even John Kramer was delusional enough to call himself “innocent,” and everyone else in the room had been female, at least until whoever had attacked Peter from behind had arrived. He’d struggled to get a look at his attacker’s face, but he hadn’t been able to, and although the arm around his neck and the shoes he’d seen while struggling for freedom had certainly belonged to a man, that man had been on Jigsaw’s side. Peter knew he couldn’t have been the intended victim.</p><p>            Whatever had happened in that room, it hadn’t gone according to Jigsaw’s design. Peter took savage satisfaction in that. Wherever Kramer and his accomplices were, they were on the run, now, and he hadn’t played into their hands at the meatpacking plant.</p><p>            Behind Peter’s chair, the door opened. After a brief pause, he heard it shut again as someone moved toward him.</p><p>            “I’m truly sorry about Agent Perez.”</p><p>            Peter turned his head just enough to catch a glimpse of Detective Hoffman, who had spoken, and then glanced at the bloodstained pillowcase. “She said your name, you know,” he said as he looked back toward the detective. His voice came out rough and strained—a side effect of his makeshift tracheotomy. “The last thing she said was ‘Detective Hoffman.’ Why’d she say that? Why’d she say your name?” His throat ached as he spoke, and he reached up to fidget with the bandage covering the pen-hole in his skin.</p><p>            “I don’t know,” said Hoffman, making his way around the foot of the bed.</p><p>            “No?” Peter pressed, staring up at the detective as he stopped on the other side of the mattress. It was easier to face him, now; Peter found turning his head painful, with the wound in his throat hindering his movements. “How’d you walk out of that building?”</p><p>            Hoffman paused. His eyes narrowed, a challenge in the tight set of his mouth. “How did you?”</p><p>            “On a gurney with a fuckin’ hole in my throat,” Peter snapped. He lifted his hand to his neck again as he coughed, the sudden increase in his volume too much for his healing throat to handle. When the coughs had subsided, he returned his focus to Hoffman. “Look at you. Couple of scratches and a story about how your arm straps broke? Jigsaw doesn’t make mistakes.”</p><p>            Peter wasn’t going to let on that he was certain Kramer had done just that at the meatpacking plant, if only the one time. His point still stood, and he wasn’t going to give Hoffman any leverage. Since he’d seen the newspaper article that morning lauding Hoffman as a hero for locating Lynn and Jeff’s daughter and making it out of the plant alive, something had felt… <em>wrong</em>, at the back of Peter’s mind. Hoffman had gotten out too easily, and Peter was going to find out why.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter Nine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>As the reality of her situation sets in, Jill starts to understand that something isn't right.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jill nudged her cell phone across the kitchen table with her fingertip. The urge to call the clinic pulled at her mind, but she knew it was impossible. She wanted to tell her employees that she wouldn’t be coming in for the foreseeable future—if ever again. This thought dizzied her, and she pushed it away. She would find a way to help people, even if returning to her job and the patients she’d spent so long looking after at the Homeward Bound Clinic couldn’t be part of the equation.</p><p>            She reminded herself that turning her phone on was too dangerous, now. She’d let John use it on the way out of the city to contact his apprentices, but even if the police could track where the phone had been when those messages had been sent, that wouldn’t help them find where the group had ended up. Jill couldn’t risk using the phone from the farm and giving away the one place she, John, and Amanda had left, now that none of them could go home.</p><p>            Letting out a heavy breath, Jill lowered her head into her hands. <em>I knew what I was doing. The second I pulled a gun on Agent Strahm, I decided to throw my life away and join… whatever this is. </em>She reminded herself that, if she was being honest, she’d made that decision the moment she’d gone to Gideon Meat Packing. She hadn’t known what she’d be walking into, but she’d known Strahm was investigating John and had given him the plant’s location herself, and when she’d decided to go into the building and warn John, she’d known she was putting herself on the frontlines.</p><p>            Though Jill hated the idea of being unable to return to her job, to the clinic she’d founded, she knew that even if she had the chance, she wouldn’t change the decisions she’d made over the past day. She was certain that things would have played out differently if she hadn’t shown up at the plant, and she couldn’t regret putting herself in danger to keep John and Amanda safe.</p><p>            A flicker of Amanda lying on the kitchen table as Dr. Gordon dug the bullet from her shoulder passed through Jill’s mind, and she withdrew her hands from the table’s wooden surface.</p><p>            She inhaled and stood, pushing her chair in before moving to the counter where her father’s old radio still sat. It was rectangular with three small dials lining the right side and a large speaker dominating the left, and despite the dust that had collected on its surface over the years, it hadn’t lost its shine. Jill slid her hand behind it to retrieve the cord and plugged it into the outlet behind the counter. When she adjusted one dial to turn the radio on and another to tune it, the familiar sounds of static and stations fading in and out filled the air, and she could almost convince herself that she could look back and find her parents sitting at the table, ready to share a meal with her. When she’d been a child, they’d eaten breakfast together here every morning, along with her brother, and it had been Jill’s job to find something for them to listen to during the meal. The radio was older than she was; her father had won it in a contest while he and her mother had been dating, and he’d been proud of it until the day he’d died. Jill and her brother had debated what to do with it afterward, but removing it from the kitchen had felt wrong, so they’d left it in place.</p><p>            She flipped through the stations, willing herself to relax enough to enjoy the music but finding her mind too restless to settle on anything. When a news report cut through the static and she heard the words “Jigsaw Killer,” her fingers froze on the dial.</p><p>            “—<em>who has been identified as local civil engineer John Kramer, is currently at large, along with longtime accomplice Amanda Young. Police have disclosed that the two have been joined by Kramer’s ex-wife, Dr. Jill Tuck, owner of the Homeward Bound Clinic. The three should be considered armed and extremely dangerous, and anyone with knowledge of their whereabouts is encouraged to</em>—”</p><p>            At the sound of the doorknob turning and the front door opening, Jill jumped. She switched off the radio and turned toward the noise, her hand twitching for the knife block. When she saw that it was Amanda standing there, pulling down her sweatshirt’s hood as she unzipped it, Jill released the tension in her shoulders and leaned back against the counter.</p><p>            “You okay there?” asked Amanda, nodding toward Jill’s hand, which was still raised, halfway to the knives.</p><p>            “Yeah. Fine.” Jill stepped away from the counter and returned to the table, laying her hands on the back of the chair she’d vacated. The one nearest to the radio—the same place she’d sat as a child. If she held onto the chair, she told herself, maybe she could stop the trembling that had begun when she’d heard their names on the news broadcast. “Where did you go?”</p><p>            “Just for a walk.” Amanda elbowed the door shut and stepped closer. She glanced to the floor, seemingly having trouble meeting Jill’s eyes, as she always had at the clinic when she’d been hiding something.</p><p>            “To the barn?”</p><p>            Amanda’s mouth twitched, a slight frown creasing her brow.</p><p>            “I looked out the window before I came down here, and I saw you headed that way. It’s probably a disaster in there. Just be careful, okay? There’s a lot of farm equipment still around.”</p><p>            Amanda nodded quickly, reaching for a lock of dark hair that had fallen from her ponytail and tucking it behind her ear. “Yeah, I’ll watch out for that. Thanks.” She tried to smile, but the expression fell flat. She moved past Jill and through the kitchen, and her steps retreated down the hallway and up the stairs.</p><p>            Jill raised a brow. <em>Not checking on John? </em></p><p>            She made her way around the table, planning to check on him herself. As she walked, she caught sight of a smudge of dirt on the floor where Amanda had come in, and she fought down the urge to sigh. Jill retrieved a rag from the drawer beside the sink, running it under the faucet before returning to kneel beside the dirty spot.</p><p>           As she reached out with the rag, she realized that the smudge wasn’t made of dirt. The material looked old and somewhat discolored, but it was unmistakably blood.</p><p>           <em>How would she be tracking in blood? Where is this from? </em>         </p><p>           Jill’s stomach churned, and she dropped the rag to the floor, running for the bathroom.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter Ten</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>John decides to send Amanda with Hoffman for their next game.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The kitchen was quiet apart from the scraping of utensils against plates, and John sensed tension buzzing in the air. Something had changed between Jill and Amanda, and the idea that he couldn’t immediately reason out what it was unsettled him. He wasn’t even certain Amanda realized the difference; she was still acting as she always had around Jill—respectful, penitent. Even though, to Amanda’s knowledge, neither Jill nor John had any idea that she had been involved in the death of their son, she always seemed to be trying to make amends for her hand in the event, at least in Jill’s presence.</p><p>            John suspected Amanda was still trying to redeem herself to him, as well, and that this explained her level of dedication to his cause, which far surpassed that of any of his other apprentices. John had no intention of letting on that he knew what Amanda had done. That he had always known, since the first game he’d put her through. She would confess when she was ready. And the games had worked—she was no longer the same woman who had persuaded her boyfriend to steal from Jill’s clinic, leading to the injury that had caused Jill to miscarry. Amanda had been rehabilitated. She was a success story for John’s methods.</p><p>            Despite the fact that Amanda was acting normally, Jill seemed to be having trouble looking at her for more than a moment at a time. While she’d turned on the radio and set plates in front of each occupied chair, she’d looked to Amanda and to John now and then, and while her gaze had often lingered on the latter, she had barely made eye contact with the former.</p><p>            What had Amanda said or done to change the atmosphere between Jill and herself? She wouldn’t have admitted her guilt so soon, when she had resisted doing so for such a long time with John. No… something else had happened, and John needed to find out the source of the tension before he lost any more control over the situation in which they all found themselves.</p><p>            He took a bite of toast and told himself to relax. No matter what was going on, at least the three of them were safe here. For now. Perhaps if Agent Strahm had the chance to leak Jill’s identity to the authorities, someone would think to check the properties in her name, but John hadn’t yet heard the outcome of the agent’s test from Hoffman. He wasn’t certain whether Peter Strahm was in the condition to pass information on to anyone.</p><p>            John returned the toast to his plate. Jill had done an admirable job of turning some of the supplies Hoffman had recovered from the plant into a meal—toast with strawberry jam, peanut butter sandwiches, sliced oranges—but there hadn’t been enough left there to last long. John would have to persuade Hoffman to get enough groceries to stock the kitchen, now that Jill, Amanda, and himself were unable to be seen in public.</p><p>            “Is the game still on for today?”</p><p>            At Amanda’s question, John looked toward her. She was watching him with determination in her eyes.</p><p>“Yes, it is,” he told her.</p><p>            “And Hoffman is running it?” There was a bite to Amanda’s tone with this question, and John believed he understood. She and Hoffman were competing to be the one to take over his legacy, and if he had interpreted their exchanges correctly, Hoffman was trying to eliminate Amanda from the competition. John was almost certain Hoffman knew of Amanda’s involvement in Gideon’s death, and until she finally admitted what she’d done or John admitted that he knew her secret, Hoffman would have that information to use as leverage against her.</p><p>            “We would all be there, if it weren’t for the circumstances,” said John. “The police know our names—while we wait to see what they’re planning, it’s safer if Mark handles things alone.”</p><p>            “I want to go with him.”</p><p>            John raised a brow. He admired her determination, and she was continuing to prove herself. But she needed to be cautious. “Your presence could blow Mark’s cover—no one can see the two of you together. What if someone were to follow you back here?”</p><p>            “I’ll be discreet, John. He can drop me off, and I can finish getting things ready while he ties whatever loose ends he has to elsewhere. I’ll even duck in the car so no one sees me with him. But I have to be there. I <em>deserve </em>to be there.”</p><p>            John looked to Jill, who was watching the exchange over the rim of her glass of water. He needed to talk with her alone, to find out why she was acting differently this morning. He trusted Amanda to be careful, or at least as careful as she ever was, and he had to admit that she was right—she had earned her place at the helm of their games.</p><p>            John inhaled. “He’s planning to come by shortly to update us on what happened with Agent Strahm. When he leaves, you can go with him.”</p><p>            A satisfied smile broke across Amanda’s face as she reached for her sandwich, and John relaxed slightly. Yes, his apprentices each had their own agendas and plans, but he knew how they thought, and he could anticipate them. He also knew Jill, and whatever was bothering her, she had still risked her life to save his the previous night. She wasn’t going to give up on him so soon.</p><p>            Everything was under control.</p><p>***</p><p>Amanda held open the front door for Hoffman, who barely glanced at her as he passed. She was undeterred. She shut the door and followed him down the hall, past the photos of Jill and John and their family members Amanda would never meet.</p><p>            “I’m coming with you today,” she muttered.</p><p>            Hoffman let out a flat laugh. “No, you’re not.” He kept his voice low, clearly as determined to keep John from hearing their conversation as Amanda was. “I’m handling this game. You had your chance yesterday—see how well that went?”</p><p>            “Yes, actually.” At the end of the hallway, a few paces from where it emptied into the kitchen, Amanda caught his arm. He looked over his shoulder to level a glare at her as he pulled out of her grasp. “I didn’t kill Lynn, and I saved Jill—John says I proved myself. I’m the next Jigsaw. You might want to stay on my good side.”</p><p>            She was still angry with John for putting her through another test, but Hoffman didn’t need to know that she had disagreements with their mentor. He needed to see her as strong, as a formidable rival and potential enemy, if he wasn’t careful.</p><p>Amanda kept her chin high as she watched him. His jaw tightened, his fingers flexing and relaxing again, and she knew she’d touched a nerve.</p><p>            Then Hoffman chuckled. “You’re not the next Jigsaw.” He leaned down to her ear, and tension shot through her body. “Haven’t you figured it out by now? You’re not good enough for him.”</p><p>            Amanda smirked. “We’ll see, won’t we?”</p><p>            She moved past him and into the kitchen, where the others still sat at the table. Jill’s expression was neutral as she looked up, glancing from Amanda to Hoffman, who entered after her. Jill’s hands were folded in front of her, and she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail since Amanda had left the room. She looked like she was about to leave for work, though that wouldn’t be possible for the foreseeable future, if it ever would be again. Amanda felt an unexpected rush of pity for her former doctor, and she pushed it to the back of her mind.</p><p>            She looked to John and stepped to the side to give Hoffman room to move closer to him. Hoffman slid into Amanda’s chair at the table, where her drink glass still sat, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes.</p><p>            “Strahm made it out.”</p><p>            Amanda studied John’s face. His eyes narrowed just slightly as he nodded, but otherwise, he didn’t react to the news. She knew his ultimate goal was for test subjects to survive—to be rehabilitated. But Agent Strahm was a wildcard. He knew too much, including the identities of everyone in the room apart from Hoffman. Each second he lived was a second they were all in danger. Amanda suspected that even John wouldn’t have minded if he’d failed to escape the water cube.</p><p>            “I got the Denlon girl to the police,” Hoffman continued, “and they promoted me to Detective Lieutenant. The last I heard, the girl’s mother is recovering at the hospital. Perez didn’t make it out of Saint Eustace. I left Strahm there, in her room. Pretty sure he blames himself. He was suspicious of me leaving the Gideon plant alive, and he said Perez’s last words were my name. He’s going to be waiting for us to make another move. He’ll be watching me.”</p><p>            “So be it,” said John. “You and Amanda know how to defend yourselves. I trust you can get through the next game without Agent Strahm presenting too much of a problem.”</p><p>            Hoffman’s shoulders tensed. “Me and Amanda?”</p><p>            “Yes. You’ll be taking her with you today. This game has a lot of moving parts—five subjects, plus an F.B.I. agent who will likely make an appearance. Don’t you think having a partner there to help you is wise?”</p><p>            Amanda felt most of her irritation with John ebb away with these words. He clearly knew Hoffman didn’t want her there for the game, but he wasn’t going to let it happen any other way. John knew Amanda was his best chance for a successor.</p><p>            “She’s not my partner. But whatever.” Hoffman stood, not bothering to push in the chair as he turned to Amanda. “Let’s go, then.” He left the kitchen and started back down the hallway toward the front door, and Amanda shot John a smile as she followed.</p>
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